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Synthetic biology

It's an analog world

Nature volume 497, pages 572–573 (2013)Cite this article

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The first synthetic genetic circuits to use analog computation have been developed. These circuits involve fewer components and resources, and can execute more complex operations, than their digital counterparts. See Letter p.619

The engineering of biological networks, a discipline called synthetic biology, has seen remarkable progress since its inception in 2000. The fact that we can now design simple but functional circuits in vivo is probably one of the most important aspects of this progress — it suggests that our biophysical understanding of the cellular milieu is largely correct, even if many details remain to be resolved. The significance of this should not be underestimated, because it means that predictive engineering of new cellular networks and systems is possible. Until now, approaches to synthetic biology have been greatly influenced by the digital computing technology that we use every day. But biological cells do not process information in a solely digital fashion; rather, they carry out many operations in an analog manner. In this issue, Daniel et al.1 (page 619) break the mould and venture into a completely new area of synthetic biology, presenting synthetic circuitry that can perform analog calculationsFootnote 1.

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Notes

  1. *This article and the paper under discussion1 were published online on 15 May 2013.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Herbert M. Sauro and Kyung Kim are in the Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-5061, USA.,

    Herbert M. Sauro & Kyung Kim

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  1. Herbert M. Sauro
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  2. Kyung Kim
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Correspondence to Herbert M. Sauro or Kyung Kim.

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Sauro, H., Kim, K. It's an analog world. Nature 497, 572–573 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12246

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